In recent years, laparoscopic and endoscopic surgical procedures have become the standard for performing cholecystectomies, gastrostomies, appendectomies, and hernia repair, among many other procedures. Minimally invasive surgical instruments are used in these procedures to view, engage, and/or treat tissue within a body cavity or other surgical site to achieve a diagnostic or therapeutic effect. Some minimally invasive surgical instruments have user operated handles that allow a surgeon to manipulate an end effector of the instrument, such as opposed clamping or stapling jaws, to grasp, fasten, or otherwise engage tissue. There are various styles of handles, but generally many user operated handles are configured such that the handles and the opposed jaws are biased to an open configuration. The handle must therefore be squeezed by a user to close the jaws. When the handle is released by the user, the jaws will move to the open configuration because of the biasing. While this configuration has many benefits, in some situations such as during fine dissection, uncontrolled opening of the jaws is undesirable because it could cause damage to surrounding tissue. It would therefore be advantageous for a user to be able to choose whether the jaws are biased open, closed, or to a neutral configuration so that the device is suitable for a wider variety of surgical procedures.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved methods and devices having user selected configurations.